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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Last Days in Santa Fe

Our time in Santa Fe was great. We had a great group of fellow Habitat for Humanity Care-A-Vanners and we all melded well together. We enjoyed our time on the build site and had lots of good times together. We had a number of dinners together at the campground, and this was a shot of us at our only dinner out where we were waiting to get a table at a local Italian restaurant.

(Cathy, Tom, Paul, Ray, Pam, Bobbi, Susan and Gary)

Unfortunately, Susan and Gary had to leave a few days early to address a water leak on the pipe from the street to their house back in Salt Lake City.

We said goodbye to them before we went off to work.

The work at the build was great. It was a lot of hard work but it was interesting we learned alot. There is something satisfying pounding nails with a hammer. And we had plenty of chances to do that.

Some of the hard work was setting all the trusses.

And the harder work was cutting the nails and resetting about half of them when we found a 1 1/2 inch error. Ugh.

We found the error about 10:00 AM and by about 4:00 PM we had reset almost half the trusses. 'if it doesn't look right....measure....'. After we confirmed the error, we had plenty of recollections how it didn't look right and it didn't line up correctly down at the other end of the building....all that monday-morning-quarterback stuff.

Still - some rework is all part of the process. We have yet to be on a build or a disaster recovery site where there wasn't something that had to be adjusted or redone. I think it is the nature of the work and we just sucked it up and got it done and moved on.

Next was the sheeting on the roof top and we got most of it down before we ran out of time.

Part of the reason we do this is that we like this kind of work. It would be nice if we had a more altruistic motivation as an intense passion for providing decent affordable homes. Don't get me wrong--it is a great cause and we believe in it. And I don't think one can find a better cause.

But the reality is that this is more about us than them unfortunately. Having said that, we had the opportunity to work along side Tina. We were building Tina's new home.

She was on site half the time we were and was our person on the chop saw. We had a lot of 2 x 6's and 2 x 4's to get cut and she was a master at it. She was full of energy and always busy. The house is supposed to be finished in another 3 months.

One of the highlights of our time here was the last lunch at the build site. (Karen, the Habitat volunteer coordinator, enlisted local volunteers to provide lunch every day!)

Lisa, another local volunteer, made sandwiches for us. But they were like none other I have ever had. Talk about a gourmet lunch!

It was really really well done and a big treat. She took a LOT of effort to do this for us and it was fantastic. Thanks Lisa!

Saturday was our last day and we all got together at Tom and Cathy's RV one more time. We all agreed it was a great build and time well spent. We were pretty much exhausted after two weeks at it. Despite the bruises and aches and pains, we will remember our Care-A-Vanner build in Santa Fe as one of the the best ever!

Thanks for joining us on the Roadrunner Chronicles! Look for the next edition tomorrow! (no kidding! after a lapse, I am ready to step it up...stay tuned!)

As always we appreciate you stopping by and viewing. Until next time...

7 comments:

Hello Randy and Pam,We loved reading your blog and the time you spent describing our wonderful time together. It was a privilege to be among this very special group of people. Thanks for sending the pictures!!!!

Thank you for coming to Santa Fe, and thank you for writing about it, Randy. It's gratifying to know the details of your time here and how those moments contributed to a satisfying two weeks. You're always welcome to join us again in the future!